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ScanDiaSyn-bloggen i mai 2007
Torsdag 31. mai
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| At the entrance to the ‘Bystuga’ in Klitten, Älvdalen (Photo: Øystein A. Vangsnes) |
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| Coffee table in Klitten. (Photo: Øystein A. Vangsnes) |
Today we made visits to the hamlets Loka and Klitten, both on the eastern side of the valley, some kilometers north of the center. Lots of informants, mostly older people, showed up today as well. And there was again no lack of coffee, buns, and cakes!
When most of the group went to Loka in the morning a smaller group visited the (secondary) school to talk to adolescents. Övdalian is an endangered language, and it's both quite clear that it's a minority language among the young inhabitants of the municipality and furthermore that those young kids that do speak it have a version heavily influenced by Swedish. The official policy does not seem to encourage the use of the language in school, i.e. not even outside of the teaching situation. But several of the youngsters expressed considerable pride in their native tongue.
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| Øystein Vangsnes discerning information about adjectival inflection and postadjectival indefinite articles in Övdalian (Photo: Henrik Rosenkvist) |
As for the linguistic investigations we keep testing our various issues. Yesterday I got some pointers suggesting that the optional masculine ending on attributive adjectives -an is not possible on nationality adjectives, a group of adjectives which otherwise generally do not allow a postadjectival (doubling) indefinite article (cf. Greek double definite determiner spread). I found those pointers quite curious and wanted to test them out better, and this morning I spoke to one guy who disconfirmed the information from yesterday. Then in the afternoon I spoke to another guy who repeated what I had found yesterday! So now I'm utterly confused! I tried hard to test the issue in more detail with the latter informant, with few advances, so I'll have to make some efforts tomorrow during the last two sessions we'll have here.
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| Peter Svenonius testing out expressions of directed motion on an older speaker of Övdalian (Photo: Øystein A. Vangsnes) |
Otherwise I'm pleased to see that other bits of results have been put forward in the comments!...
- Øystein
Onsdag 30. mai
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| The river in “River Valley” between Åsen and Brunnsberg (Photo: Christine B. Østbø) |
The second day of the Övdalian fieldwork is coming to an end. We visited two hamlets today, Åsen and Brunnsberg in the northern part of the (core) municipality. There was a multitude of informants today also – and a multitude of coffee, buns, and cookies and the likes too! So far some seventy informants have acquainted themselves with one or more of us.
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| Övdalian definitely has an extended, partitive use of the definite article. At least in part... Click on the picture! (Photo: Øystein A. Vangsnes) |
Data and information are amassing, and we are all learning a lot. Since last night, when Lars Steensland made me aware of it, I've been very fascinated by the existence of a construction which can be paraphrased as follows: "Which does he look like in his face?" (Ukin sir an aut i kråisè?), meaning ‘What does he look like in the face?’. The equivalent of ‘which’ also corresponds to ‘who’. But not only that: the neuter form can be used as a complementizer corresponding to ‘whether’. And that complementizer can even introduce direct yes/no questions! Now, adding to my fascination, in the first construction ‘which’ agrees in gender and number with the subject in classical Övdalian, and also according to some of the informants I have met (from Brunnsberg). But one informant (from Åsen) today wanted an uninflected form throughout the paradigm and another (from Lövnäs, Finnmarken) wanted either the uninflected form or simply the neuter throughout. As for more detailed information about how this construction relates to other Scandinavian wh-determiners/-modifiiers more generally, I'll leave that for coming scientific reports.
Lots of other teasers can be given. Stay tuned and maybe they'll appear...
- Øystein
Tysdag 29. mai
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| Piotr Garbacz being interviewed by SR Dalarna (Swedish Radio, the Dalarna section) (Photo: Øystein A. Vangsnes) |
The NORMS fieldwork on Övdalian (aka ‘the Älvdalen dialect’ or ‘Elfdalian’) started today. 22 linguists from all but one of the seven NORMS partners have gathered here in Älvdalen for four intensive days, and the event commenced this morning with two overview lectures by Gunnar Nyström and Lars Steensland, probably the two most knowledgeable persons on the planet when it comes to the linguistic properties of this variety of Scandinavian. Lars will be with us for the whole week, guiding and helping us in our attempts to approach the grammatical structure of Övdalian, and he has already been of invaluable help.
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| Sten Vikner investigates Object Shift in Övdalian on site in Älvdalen (Photo: Marit Julien) |
After lunch we had our first encounter with native speakers of this exotic language from the hamlet Västmyckeläng. An impressive number of willing informants showed up at the agreed meeting place, allowing for a good spread on the equally substantial number of researchers. A variety of issues were, and will continue to be, investigated: nominal and adjectival syntax and morphology, verb movement and V2, verbal directional particles, argument structure, Object Shift, negation etc. Sten Vikner was able to confirm, beyond doubt, Levander's claim that Övdalian lacks Object Shift altogether: unstressed pronominal objects will follow all sentential (VP-external) adverbs, not just negation.
More to follow...
- Øystein
Onsdag 7. mai
I går hadde Hilde, Peter og eg ein presentasjon om Troms-måla på medlemsmøte for Tromsø Mållag. Presentasjonen var strukturert rundt NORMS-feltarbeidet på Senja, og elles tok Hilde opp fleire ting frå si tidlegare og noverande forsking. Vi viste òg nokre videosnuttar og avslutta sjølvsagt med "Elly-filmen". (Ordlista til Elly vart for øvrig sendt rundt blant dei frammøtte og vakte ein viss interesse.) Det var bra frammøte – lokalet (Café Cora) var i grunnen fullt, så det var vel ein 30-40 tilhøyrarar.
- Øystein
Föstudagur 4. maí
Har ordna opp i rotet ... nå burde man kunne se det som står i Scanbib uten å måtte endre på innstillingene ...
En trist nyhet: Vi får en del søppel inn i dialektsyntaksbibliografien. Derfor er det ikke lenger mulig å legge noe til i databasen uten at man først logger seg inn. I tillegg får man ikke tilslag på nye poster før jeg har godkjent dem.
Vil man legge noe til, kan man enten sende den pr. e-post til meg, eller be meg om passord.
- Gunnar Hrafn
Torsdag 3. mai
Thursday last week I presented the ScanDiaSyn network at a meeting for new NordForsk networks in Oslo at the NordForsk head quarters. My presentation was one of two to show examples of existing networks, and presumably also to illustrate the range of variation... Susanne Viefers presented the other network on Low-dimensional physics: The theoretical basis of nanotechnology. Here's the table of contents for my presentation. Curt will run some of the presentation again next week when he's representing the NLVN network at an equivalent meeting for new NordForsk networks of national centers of excellence.
On a different note I received the "digitized" and alphabetized version of the 33 page hand written manuscript with special words from the Senja dialect that we received from Elly Kristoffersen during the NORMS fieldwork in October/November last year. Those interested may take a sneak peak here.
- Øystein
Arkiv
2006
Desember
November
Oktober
September
August
Juni
Mai
April
Mars
Februar
Januar
2005
Oktober-desember
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